A little rain goes a long way

Here are some water level readings from Athlone Weir. I’ve taken them from the OPW’s very useful water levels site, where you can monitor levels from the comfort of your own armchair. [If only there were a gauge at Killaloe ….]

At Athlone, staff gauge zero is 35.360m above Poolbeg datum (from 18 Oct 2003). I chopped the bottoms off the first two graphs. The first one shows the level for 35 days to 30 September 2014; I presume that the level of Lough Ree was being reduced to enable it to hold some of the autumn’s rainfall.

Athlone Weir 35 days to 30 September 2014 (truncated)

Here’s the graph for the 35 days to 15 October 2014.

Athlone Weir 35 days to 15 October 2014 (truncated)

Then, in October, the level began to rise again. By 30 October, it was back to about 2.1 metres, roughly the starting point on the first of the graphs above.

Monthly rainfall totals were above-average nearly everywhere with the exception of stations in coastal areas in the Northwest and West and in parts of the Midlands. Percentage of Long-Term Average (LTA) values ranged from 81% at Gurteen to 161% at Johnstown Castle, which recorded it wettest October since 2002.

Fermoy (Moore Park) reported 135% of its LTA with 153.6 mm and its wettest October in 10 years. The wettest days were mainly the 3rd, 5th and 28th, with the month’s highest daily rainfall reported on the 5th at Cork Airport with 38.6 mm, its wettest October day in five years. Mullingar reported its wettest October day in 12 years on the 28th with 26.4 mm. The number of wet days (days with 1 mm or more rainfall) ranged from 12 at Casement Aerodrome to 24 at Valentia Observatory and Claremorris, with Claremorris reporting its highest number of October wet days since 1973.

Use of the OPW charts is licensed under Directive 2003/98/EC [PDF] of the European Parliament and of the Council on the re-use of public sector information. Met Éireann allows use of “the web pages, and the information contained within them, for private and non-commercial purposes, for teaching, and for research […] is allowed subject to the condition that the source of the information is always credited in connection with its use”.